Hey there! So, the last time I posted here was in April of 2016. It's been awhile. I've kept this space open with the hope of returning to it one day. And today I've got something to share!
I've been following Meg McElwee for what I think has been near a decade. Her son, Finn is my son's age and I discovered her blog alongside SouleMama's when I was pregnant with my first. He's eight now. I learned about Montessori education, peaceful parenting and about Squam Art Workshops from these women.
Meg had dropped out of the scene a bit over the last couple of years and so had I. I stopped blogging. But I started using Instagram more. I kept up with Meg's Instagram posts whenever they came around. I was thrilled when she started releasing patterns again. And when she released the Stasia Dress, I caught the fever. Stasia is a fitted dress with a swingy skirt, made using knit fabrics. It has a flattering scoop neckline. The seam for the skirt hits cleverly at the most narrow part of your natural waist. You'll feel like a goddess while you're wearing it.
I made a couple of versions last summer; monkeying with the waistline and the fit a bit until I got it just right. You can find all of my earlier versions on my Instagram page. When fall rolled around and the temperatures up here by the big lake started to drop, I wanted to make a cooler weather version and began scheming a way to make the Stasia Dress into a romper.
It turns out that it's not that hard to do! Add a crotch seam by tracing the seam from a high-waisted pair of pants, add a bit of length to the legs to compensate for the fabric pulled up by making the new seam and you'll find yourself in romper-heaven! Here's how I did it...
First, you'll need the front, maxi skirt piece from the Stasia Dress pattern. I had mine printed at PDF plotting, which I'd highly recommend in order to avoid printing and taping together the many pages that it takes to make a maxi skirt. Meg has a tutorial for using this service here.
You should plan on using some fabric that you're not precious about, but that is similar to what you'll eventually use for your romper to make a muslin.
At first, I altered both the back skirt piece and the front skirt piece. Technically, that's a good idea because the back waist and front waist are slightly different on the pattern pieces AND you'll find that on your ready-to-wear pants, the back crotch seam is slightly longer than the front crotch seam to account for the curve of our bottoms. However, the Stasia dress front and back skirts turn out to be different lengths when the crotch seam is added. If you use the front and back pieces, at the hem of the romper pants, the back of the pants will be longer than the front and it's just a mess. So - I decided to just use the front of the skirt pattern for both the front and back of the romper as shown here. Yes, I use antlers that my grandpa found in the woods as pattern weights.
Because the waist of the dress is high compared to most of my ready-to-wear pants and skirts, I used a pair of high-waisted pants to draft the crotch seam. If you use a pair of pants to draft the seam that are not high-waisted, that's fine but you'll want to make sure that the length of the rise is plenty long so that the seam doesn't crawl up in an unsightly way. Decide where you want the seam to fall (how long you want the rise to be) and don't forget to add 1/4" on either end (1/2" total) for the seam allowance. The rise, from the skirt waistline on the pattern piece to the bottom of the curved line (crotch seam line) that I drew was 14.5."
It's likely that you'll need to add some length to your skirt pieces for this alteration. Adding the curved, crotch seam will pull the fabric up, making the legs shorter than they would have been on the skirt. I added three inches to the length of the skirt piece. I added this length about about 15" above the hem line - NOT where the pattern piece says to add length. If I would have added length where the pattern piece indicates to, it would have affected the crotch seam that I was drafting and I didn't want to do that. Also, wherever you add length, you'll be adding a bit of width to get the diagonal line to match up and I didn't want to add volume or width to the hips.
Fold the pants that you'll use to draft the crotch seam in half with the front side out and lay them on the front skirt pattern piece.
Using a pencil, roughly trace the curve. You're drafting a crotch seam. Terminate the line for the crotch seam by angling it slightly towards the center line before you get to the waist line on the pattern. Don't monkey with the cutting line for the waist.
Now, use a curved ruler like the one shown here or the curve on your iron or anything that you have around to help you to get a nice, clean curve. One of the keys to sewing a good looking garment is to do good, clean cutting. Make yourself a nice looking line to cut on. The finished garment will look much better if you take the time to trace and cut carefully first.
Cut out your pattern pieces as instructed. EXCEPTION: You'll be cutting out FOUR front maxi skirt pattern pieces (with the new crotch seam that you drafted and the length added) instead of cutting out two front maxi skirt pieces and two back maxi skirt pieces.
Follow the dress construction instructions. Where the instructions say:
" 2. Stitch Center Front and Center Back Skirt Seams and Attach Bodices
a. Place skirt front pieces right sides together matching center raw edges and notches. Pin and stitch
center seam." You'll put the pant front pieces right sides together and just stitch the curve that you drafted. DO NOT stitch down the legs.
Continue to assemble the romper using the dress instructions. The last seam that you'll sew, after sewing up the side seams and under the arms, is the leg seam. Sew from one inner leg to the other, matching up the crotch seams and pivoting where they meet.
I didn't hem my legs. Sometimes I can be crazy like that. But you SHOULD if it feels good. Have a blast in your new Stasia romper! The fabric that I used for this romper is a scuba knit from Shop LaMercerie.
